The Senate has passed legislation that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that’s expected to face legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who rely on the short-form video
Just the standard “you can sue if you think this is unfair and have your day in court.”
What it looks like is if China or Russia has a competitor to a US product (say, Yandex or Baidu), a US company (say, Google) could lobby the President to mark them as a threat and ban them from the US. The product doesn’t need to actually have the capacity to cause harm, it just needs to be from one of the adversary countries (currently China, Russia, N. Korea, and Iran).
This is true, but it’s also pretty unlikely. Even TikTok is just a vine ripoff, but a vine that was successfully monetized.
There really hasn’t been much to come out of our “foreign adversaries” that I think most people would care about. If that’s the price we have to pay … I’m not the least bit worried about it really.
Furthermore, China is happy to use public money to back companies (as a sort of “state run venture capital”); that is a threat to competition in the same way venture capital is a threat to competition.
Google and Facebook certainly stand to benefit here since TikTok is a direct competitor. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ban TikTok (I’d like to see some evidence from the FBI though), but it means we should scrutinize the bill to see if there are undesirable parts to it.
Likewise, I think this bill could be used against companies with Chinese investment, like anything Tencent investment (e.g. Fortnite, League of Legends, etc). That’s obviously not the target, but I think it could be used to get those banned from the US.
So I’m worried about this bill. Maybe I’m misreading it (I hope so), and it doesn’t seem as bad as some people claim, but I do think it’s problematic.
Likewise, I think this bill could be used against companies with Chinese investment, like anything Tencent investment (e.g. Fortnite, League of Legends, etc).
IANAL but I believe that would not be covered under this bill. Those games are run by American companies with foreign investment.
Maybe when it gets to the point where the foreign power is the majority shareholder. However, I think in a publicly traded company they’d just be forced to divest and that would likely take a different law.
Just the standard “you can sue if you think this is unfair and have your day in court.”
This is true, but it’s also pretty unlikely. Even TikTok is just a vine ripoff, but a vine that was successfully monetized.
There really hasn’t been much to come out of our “foreign adversaries” that I think most people would care about. If that’s the price we have to pay … I’m not the least bit worried about it really.
Furthermore, China is happy to use public money to back companies (as a sort of “state run venture capital”); that is a threat to competition in the same way venture capital is a threat to competition.
But is it worth the potential for abuse?
Google and Facebook certainly stand to benefit here since TikTok is a direct competitor. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ban TikTok (I’d like to see some evidence from the FBI though), but it means we should scrutinize the bill to see if there are undesirable parts to it.
Likewise, I think this bill could be used against companies with Chinese investment, like anything Tencent investment (e.g. Fortnite, League of Legends, etc). That’s obviously not the target, but I think it could be used to get those banned from the US.
So I’m worried about this bill. Maybe I’m misreading it (I hope so), and it doesn’t seem as bad as some people claim, but I do think it’s problematic.
IANAL but I believe that would not be covered under this bill. Those games are run by American companies with foreign investment.
Maybe when it gets to the point where the foreign power is the majority shareholder. However, I think in a publicly traded company they’d just be forced to divest and that would likely take a different law.